Found Any Of These?

Fungi thrive on dark, wet and cool places with decaying organic matter. I’m talking about your worm bin, of course. The worm bins are ideal places for fungi. An this is as organic as it gets. You see, “organic” agriculture refers to natural agriculture. Plants do not eat organic matter; only minerals with water. Plants make the miracle in this planet: they turn energy (sun) and inert compounds (fertilizer) into living tissue.

As a matter of fact, first there were plants then there were animals. There is nothing on earth that can do what plants do. Fungus is really an organic produce. Unlike plants, it cannot process inert fertilizers; it depends on decaying organic matter to grow. The worm bin has a lot of that, so it can get some mushrooms every now and then.

Not so many times, though. In the several years I’ve been doing vermiculture, I have had a few fungi in the worm bins, but it is really rare. Luckily, humus is not very good for fungi. Humus has little decaying matter; worms take care of that. What fungi use is the decaying matter before worms can eat it.

Fungus are of no concern to the worm bins or yourself (unless you eat them)

You can say that they compete with worms for food, but I wouldn’t worry too much about that; they don’t take too much and worms will not complain about that.

Fungi, as long as they are saphrofites (feed on dead matter), are not a concern for your worm bin. They can be an annoyance, but not that much. You can just poke them out and leave them there for the worms to eat. If you can identify them, maybe you can make a nice meal, but I don’t take risks… with so many of this things that can get you high or dead, better safe than sorry.

Anyway, it will not be uncommon to see a couple of these in your worm bin. Just remember that they are not harmful for your vermiculture installation and they are just part of the flora and fauna you will find with your worms.

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Be Careful With The Water

When you are doing vermiculture, things can get very simple. Just add some food for the worms, keep the worm bin wet and there you are. In a few months, you will have the best organic fertilizer ever.

Problem is, there are always complications. I’m not saying is not easy, is just that, sometimes, you will need to take care of some other things. On this post, I’m going to talk about water. Since worms are mostly water, that should be one of the things you have to care about.

Nowadays you receive water in a tube. Unless you are on the country side, you can get tap water just opening the sink. The problem with tap water is that, most of the time, it is treated so it won’t be harmful for you. The problem is that good for you is probably bad for your worm bin.

Not that the water will kill the worms, but vermiculture is all about bacteria, and bacteria is very sensitive to chlorine, that is one of the most favored disinfectant used in pools and tap water. Also, a bucket of water with chlorine will not kill all the bacteria in the worm bin, but it will surely decimate them.

Son, if you do this, you will be in an endless circle:

Bacteria grows and food decays because of its action
Worm feeds on the decayed material
You put water with chlorine and kill a lot of bacteria
Go to step 1

Since the point of vermiculture is to give the worm bin all the advantages they can get, not to rely on bacteria’s numbers to cope with all the disinfectant you are pouring every day.

You can take care of this in two ways. One is to use an anti chlorine that you can buy in any aquarium store or something. You can get a large bottle in some hardware store (I got it in Home Depot) and save some money. Although is pretty inexpensive, the aquarium will sell it in very small quantities and much more costly.

The other one is to use a special filter to get rid of chlorine. The one I know is made with activated carbon, but I guess you will just have to ask.

So, take care of your worms with good, disinfectant free water. This will keep the bacteria in your worm bin happy and your worms thriving.

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Food Ready To Go

Or at least it is for vermiculture. Have you seen this after a few days you forgot spinach or lettuce in the fridge? Well, it is pretty common. Maybe you decided to put yourself on a diet and bought 5 lettuces to eat one every day instead of those tasty pork ribs. Anyway, after a few days of staying there forgotten, lettuce starts to decay. This process is slow in the refrigerator, but it happens.

If you are like most people, you don’t even open the bag and throw the thing away. If you don’t have earth worms, that is. This yucky thing may be unpleasant for you, but it is ready for your worm bin. You see, compost worms like Eisenia Foetida or Eisenia Andrei do not have teeth or any other means of chewing, so it feeds engulfing everything and putting it out from its rear end. For the worms to do this, the food must be in complete decay.

This can happen with any type of leaves (when they are green), if they are stored when they are still fresh. Dry leaves can take a very long time to reach this point. The decay is the work of beneficial bacteria that consume the organic matter into its primary components. If you leave this process to go on for a while, you will get minerals, which are the plants food.

This can take a while, but earthworms take care of business much faster. Since their intestines are full of bacteria, they aid the decaying process when organic matter goes trough their intestinal tract.

So, you can mince a little your leftovers and give them to your worms. Decaying will be much faster when the material is in small pieces, so help them a little. Worms are not picky and the bacteria in the worm bin will help in getting the food ready in no time.You just have to give them some bedding material like newspaper or cardboard.

Use natures own forces to your benefit. That is one of the advantages of vermiculture.

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What They Can Eat?

Every time I read something about vermiculture, the same thing is told to everybody: worms don’t like citric plants, onion, pepper and anything spicy. Although this is true to an extent, it can guide to some misconceptions.

So, what can I feed to my worm bin? Earthworms can eat anything that was once alive. Even yourself. But, since it will take some time and insects for you to be edible to them, it is better to give them some food that will be converted faster.

The food of choice for vermiculture is herbivore manure. Horses, cows, bunnies and anything that eats grass will give your worms a nice meal. This is because manure is already predigested and is a lot. Herbivores have an abundant food supply in plants, but have to eat a lot.

If you are in the city, using manure is out of the question. Not only it will be hard to get, but your popularity among your neighbors will have a serious hit. Don’t worry too much, though; a well cared worm bin will not be smelly at all.

So, if you want to make some urban vermiculture, you have a pretty good supply of food: your kitchen. You probably throw away at least 20% of your food, due to cutting, preparing, cooking and leftovers. All this is great food for your worms. If your worm bin is big enough, you may not throw away anything again.

A good bedding material can be paper. It is cheap, easy to get and worms like it very much. You just have to get it wet for a few hours and cut it to small size pieces. When wet, you can do this with your hands, but, if you have access to a mill, it will be much easier.

Combining paper and kitchen leftovers is good for your worm bin and also is cheap and helpful in your own house. Anyway, you should use any material that is easy to get and is not so acidic. You can use clippings from your backyard, leftovers from a restaurant, and many other sources. Most of these will not charge you for that and will be happy to have you there. With a little luck, you can even charge a fee for cleaning.

So, vermiculture is not that picky. Your worms will be happy with your leftovers and you can turn pure garbage into something of value.

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Why Vermiculture?

When you talk about vermiculture, most people have the creeps. Well, since we were children, worms are seen as a disgusting little creature that carries a lot of diseases or stings you when you try to touch it. Maybe is just that whoever told us about worms didn’t told us that some of them are pretty good guys.

Having a vermiculture system is easy and very cheap but, why would you do it? Well, taking care of your planet is a good reason. Land fills, one of the few ways we still have to get rid of garbage, are almost completely full. And that’s not the only problem. Although there are a lot of chemicals and toxic waste that contribute to destroy this place, organic garbage, when piled up in one place, can be as damaging as those.

Think about it. Plastic cups, cans and those things occupy space mostly. Most are recyclable. Organic waste, on the other hand, stays decomposing, creating harmful fumes, rising temperature, contaminating underground water courses and attracting thousands of critters that will pass you nice diseases. A lot of these problems can be solved using vermiculture.

Worms eat everything that was once alive, so they can process anything organic you dispose. Yes, that too. Well, human “manure” is not exactly the best material to make usable humus or vermicompost. Although it is supposed to have the same properties of other types of humus, it is likely to carry patogens and parasites that can cause serious health hazards. That is why this kind of humus is only used to fertilize lawns, golf courses and any other plants that will not be used for human consumption.

But you don’t need to use your manure. In a good day, at least 20% of the food you cook is wasted. Just take a look at the garbage can. Although many people are wasteful for the heck of it, a lot of that waste is really something that you are not going to eat anyway, like peelings, stems, pizza leftovers and things like that.

Anyway, if you do vermiculture, you are not only helping your community, you are also saving money and getting the best fertilizer you will be able to get. Fair deal for your garbage, isn’t it?


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DIY Vermiculture

Vermiculture is the art of growing earth worms. Maybe you have heard about humus, that is the best organic fertilizer in the world. Well, humus can be made in your own home, with little work on your part and without changing your life style.

If you are the average citizen, you create several pounds of organic trash every week. This organic material rots inside the trash bags, oozes foul liquids and makes getting out the garbage, at least, a rather unpleasant experience. No doubt anybody wants to take out the trash.

Anyway, all this garbage can turn into the best compost ever, if you have the right tools and knowledge. Not only will you convert a useless material into a great fertilizer; you will also help your community by reducing organic waste in the land fill or whatever waste disposal facility you use.

Vermiculture can be done without high expenses and just takes a little practice to get it right. Also, you will be breeding worms, which grow and multiply very fast. You can use them not only to process the garbage, but also to feed fish, frogs, and yourself, if you are into that kind of thing.

If you have ever thought about vermiculture, this is a great time to start. With pollution going up every year and out climate changing, every little thing counts. If you process your organic waster with vermiculture, you are doing your part to help the environment. Something we should start doing; if we like living here, that is.

Although there are a lot of ready to go vermiculture systems that you can get for a few bucks, making your own is easy and extremely cheap. There are several materials you can use, and some of them you can get for free.

Having a vermiculture system in your house will be a great investment, not only to feed your garden, but also to help save your planet.

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